And without you is how I disappearAnd live my life alone forever nowCan you hear me cry out to youWords I thought I’d choke onFigure out I’m really not so withYou anymore, I’m just a ghostSo I can’t hurt you anymore…

~This Is How I Disappear; My Chemical Romance

~*~

If you found me gone one day, with nothing but a whirlwind of scattered letters and notebooks and papers, with one parched fountain pen dying of dehydration in the middle, lying forgotten in my dislimned room like an ironic tableau, to indicate the figure, the mass, the emptied space which my once-corporeal missing body once occupied, what would you do?

Would you silently shut the door, lock the house, and leave, leave that damned place that swallowed me whole, and start afresh, burying all memories and preludes of mine, allowing it to be covered in dust and cobwebs along with the crumbling papers, in that lonely dark room in a restless abandoned house, doomed to become another cheap haunted tourist attraction—?

Or would you take a deep breath, gathering all your aplomb and composure in a single oxygen intake, preparing yourself for the worst yet still hoping for the best, grip the knob with sweaty quivering palms, open the door with a prominent creak, and step in cautiously, allowing the darkness of the shadows and the lingering ghosts of what once was to chill your bones and embrace your every being—?

And if you were to choose the latter, if you were to gather all the papers, crumpled, clean, torn-up, every scrap and bit scribbled upon in a fit of either ennui or frustration, and put them together, as if they were the puzzle pieces that will finally solve the complexities and mysteries of my shambled life, and you read them, word for word, letter for letter, line for line and rhyme for rhyme, the mindlessly scratched punctuation and intentionally scratched out words blurring into a singular monstrous emotion that discreetly ravaged and poisoned your child’s system internally, now reforming and threatening to tear at your soul’s throat, as you read the unorganised pastiche of all my regrets, passions, agonies, jubilances, those things that I wanted to say, those things I never said, and those things that I will never get to say, what would you do?

Would you tie those anthologies of pain and paradise altogether in a messy little bundle, and without so much as an apology nor prayer, simply toss them gracelessly into the raging hungry fireplace, letting each scrap of paper curl up like dying butterfly wings and be devoured by the rising flames, starving for memories to destroy, turning my thoughts into bitter ashes, no longer to be sifted and repaired, rather only left to the whim of the wind, to get caught in people’s eyes, leaving my life to be an open case, speculated and falsified upon, leaving the words of the dead to remain dead and only an unspoken echo, a pale blot in the fabric of time—?

Or would you tie those florilegiums of hurt and happiness altogether in a neat little bundle, and with utterances of faith and assurance, share them eloquently with the others wanting in hope, letting each page be turned with eager fingers like flourishing petals of blue forget-me-nots and be devoured by the willing masses, voracious for memories to engrave, turning my ponderings into a spectrum of colours, no longer to be ignored and rotting away in a locked grey vault, rather to be left in the whim of the breeze, to get caught in people’s hearts, leaving my life to be stipulated and validated upon, making the words of the dead come back to life and to gain a voice of their own, a universe itself in the tapestry of time—?

And if you opted for the second decision, and you succeeded, what would you do if you returned to my room one day, and found me, sitting casually on my bed, with an overflowing ink jar dripping murky tears on my desk and a flurry of blank sheets of paper like a hurricane of unconceived literature on the spotless carpet, taciturn as I write out brand new compositions with a faint yet genuine smile on my solid scarlet lips, content with my slowly unfading existence, colliding shades of carnation and pastel tints efflorescing on my pallid cheeks and everywhere else that the bleeding colours chances to touch, revived by your efforts, revived by the memory of my name fresh in everyone’s sentience, unaged and youthful, looking as if I never left, this place, this world, and a void in your mind, in the very first place?

Would you tell yourself that all this, was simply nothing but a tired delusional dream of yours, disintegrating into the aether as soon as you make contact with it—?

Or would you dare step in again, completing a full möbius strip of the vanishing cycle, into my bright phantasmic room, and touch my skin to see if the bubble pops…?